By Maddie Garvis//
Hood’s Queer Student Union hosted a Zoom talk with Professor Simone Kolysh addressing transgender and racial issues on March 31, Transgender Day of Visibility.
Kolysh, who identifies as transgender and uses they/them pronouns, teaches sociology and gender studies at Hood. The talk focused on the oppression that transgender people face and how it intersects with racial oppression.
They explained that Black transgender people and other transgender people of color face an increased amount of discrimination because they are experiencing oppression due to both their race and gender identity. Kolysh also said that talk of rights for transgender people are often left out of the conversation of LGBTQ+ rights, specifically the rights of transgender people of color.
“Most representations of queer and trans communities are white, and that’s who gets funding and that’s who gets heard,” Kolysh said. “But in reality, the likeliest communities to be queer and trans are people of color…any class that talks about gender and sexuality can’t forget to also mention race and how it’s integral to the way we think about these things.”
President of Hood’s Queer Student Union, Molly Herdering, commented on the importance of having talks like Kolysh’s more often. “It is one thing to be aware of the issues, but if no one is actively doing anything or talking about them, then what’s the point?” Herdering said. “It’s important to educate people on LGBTQ+ issues and current events because people part of the community are valid and deserve to be seen and that these issues are important.”
Many states have passed or are in the process of passing anti-trans legislation. During the 2021 state legislative session, over two dozen states have filed a total of over 82 anti-transgender bills, the highest number of anti-trans bills ever introduced in a single session, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
The Arkansas State Senate passed a bill on March 29, The Arkansas Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act, that bans access to gender-affirming healthcare, like puberty blockers and hormones, for transgender minors. According to NBC News, the deputy director for transgender justice at the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT & HIV Project, Chase Strangio, called the law, “the single most extreme anti-trans law to ever pass through a state legislature.”
Kolysh addressed the passing of the Arkansas bill in the talk, saying that, “these kinds of policies are going to kill people.”
The governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, vetoed the anti-transgender healthcare bill on April 5, calling it “a vast government overreach,” according to CNN. The following day, April 6, the state’s General Assembly voted to override the governor’s veto, officially passing the law, according to CNN.
The passage of this law makes Arkansas the first state in the country to prohibit physicians from providing gender-affirming healthcare to transgender minors.
On March 24, in a recent victory for transgender people, the US Senate confirmed Dr. Rachel Levine as assistant secretary of health in the Department of Health and Human Services, according to NPR. With her confirmation, Levine made history as the first openly transgender person to be confirmed as a high-ranking federal official by the Senate.
Kolysh also spoke in their talk about how important it is for cisgender people to be an ally to the transgender people in their lives. “Half of trans people reported having attempted suicide, many numbers are really much higher than that,” Kolysh said. “Studies also show that if you are that person in a trans person’s life who affirms their gender, their pronouns, their name, and their life, their risk of suicide goes down to 4%. That’s tremendous.”
Kolysh emphasized that transgender people face injustice from all sides–at home, at school, at work, in the streets, politically and representationally, so it’s vital that everyone do their best to combat this oppression.
“We need everyone on board,” Kolysh said. “If you just do as much as talk about pronouns, or define for someone what trans means, that’s good. If you want to lobby and do political work around it, that’s good. If you want to riot and go with me to the streets, that’s fine. It’s a multi-headed dragon, and we have to slay it with a bunch of swords.”
Those interested in how to be a better ally to transgender people can find resources from the Trevor Project here.
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